Diatessaron, the four New Testament Gospels compiled as a single narrative by Tatian about ad 150. It was the standard Gospel text in the Syrian Middle East until about ad 400, when it was replaced by the four separated Gospels. Quotations from the Diatessaron appear in ancient Syriac literature, but no ancient Syriac manuscript now exists. A 3rd-century Greek papyrus fragment was discovered in 1933 at Doura-Europus, northwest of Baghdad, Iraq. Whether the original writing was done in Greek or Syriac is unknown. There are also manuscripts in Arabian and Persian and translations into European languages made during the Middle Ages.

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120 ce Syria April 173 Syrian compiler of the Diatessaron (Greek: “Through Four,” “From Four,” or “Out of Four”), a version of the four Gospels arranged in a single continuous narrative that, in its Syriac form, served the biblical-theological vocabulary of...

in biblical literature

...at the end of the 12th century accelerated the demand for the vernacular Scriptures, and one of the earliest extant examples is the Liège manuscript (c. 1270) translation of the Diatessaron (a composite rendering of the four Gospels) by Tatian, a 2nd century Syrian Christian heretical scholar; it is believed to derive from a lost Old Latin original. Best known of all the...

...he quoted freely from the Gospels, Hebrews, the Pauline Letters, I Peter, and Acts. Justin’s Syrian pupil, Tatian (c. 160), although he quotes from John separately, is best known for his Diatessaron (literally, “through four” [gospels], but also a musicological term meaning “choral” “harmony”), which was a life of Christ compiled from all four...